I took a second to absorb the implications of Mendoza’s snappy analysis. I let out a gust of breath that I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“So our demonstration might actually help make a case against Ariane.”
“Which means it was a good thing we did it. If you could think of it, the cops could think of it, and now we’re that much ahead. The next step is to have a chat with Sam Schwartzchild, so that he can have a chat with Ariane. Meanwhile, any steps short of imperiling your immortal soul that you can take to keep Paul from doing something conspicuously stupid in the City of Pittsburgh would be helpful.”
“I’ll try everything else first. If nothing works, we’ll see if my immortal soul is negotiable.”
Chapter Forty-three
I didn’t try to reach Paul while I was driving back downtown. Instead I spent the drive-time thinking about what I was going to say. I figured he wouldn’t answer, and I wanted to leave a message that would actually motivate him to respond. That argued against improvisation. Spontaneity is critical—it should be well-rehearsed.
By skipping lunch, I managed it. I sat in my cubicle at 1:02 p.m., glanced down at three-quarters of a page of bullet points, took a deep breath, and punched Paul on my Droid’s speed dial. Interesting that I still had him on speed dial. I’d been too damn busy for the last month to think about switching that slot to my dentist. Four rings and then a very nice lady who sounded like she was working in New Delhi suggested that I leave a message.
“Paul, this is Cindy. I’m sitting here at my desk, looking at the engagement ring you bought me with the first money you ever got for writing. I’m not going to pretend that I’m getting weepy, because you have an infallible bullshit detector and you’d know I was lying. But I do still have enough feelings for you that I haven’t sold the thing to Josten’s Jewelers yet. I’m worried about you and, even more important, I’m worried about me. We’re in trouble. I need to talk to you about what it is and what we can do about it. I need a call and I need it soon. As in this afternoon. Sorry, that was bossy. Okay, bitchy. I’m a little on edge. Lemme try it again. This afternoon. Please. You know the number.”
I hit the pound sign and punched off the call. Flattery works with most people and with males you should lay it on with a trowel. At that point it occurred to me that if he did return the call we could end up meeting that evening. I pulled open my top right-hand desk drawer and fingered through paper clips and rubber bands until I found the engagement ring, where I’d thrown it until I could hike over to Josten’s. I stashed the ring in my jacket pocket next to the bags of measured black powder that I’d bought at Cumonow’s and hadn’t had to use. Then I put a reminder on my calendar to take Paul off speed-dial as soon as this circus was over.
I worked on other stuff over the next sixty-six minutes, but I ended up billing only eight-tenths of an hour. My mind kept drifting to Paul’s crack about the “real murder weapon.” Obviously, Learned had told him something about where this mythical firearm could be found, and that had to be someplace where Paul could conceivably get his hands on it. But where? Then, all at once, my mouth opened slightly and I looked up from my computer screen to stare straight ahead at a Dilbert cartoon taped to one wall of my cubicle.
Shit! Bradshaw’s home! Learned stashed something there to frame Ariane when he was planning Tom Bradshaw’s murder!
I jumped up and headed at a trot toward Mendoza’s office. He was just coming out and moving rapidly in my direction. We both opened our mouths, but I got words out first.
“We have to talk to Ariane Bradshaw!”
“Then get your coat on. We’re meeting her at Sam’s office in ten minutes.”
If you imagine Mendoza’s office at one end of a law-firm décor continuum and Calder & Bull at the other, Fletcher & Peck would be closer to Calder & Bull, maybe ten clicks past the midpoint. The woodwork cheated toward the blond side, the carpeting was top-drawer stuff from North Carolina instead of eight-knot Persian, and the conference room they showed us into seemed designed to tell clients, “You’re paying for oak, not marble.”
On the brisk walk over I’d told Mendoza about my searing insight. He agreed that we should top the agenda with it. As soon as the four of us—Schwartzchild had Sally Port in tow—joined Ariane and Caitlin in the conference room, I zapped my theory out. Port nodded and unholstered her mobile phone.
“We’ve had two ops from Agincourt Security watching the house and grounds twenty-four/seven since the search of Learned’s suite at the Hilton.” She thumbed numbers as she spoke. “I’ll give them a heads-up.”
She strode toward the conference room door but someone answered before she reached it, so all of us heard her no-nonsense admonition:
“Okay, guys, just got word that you might have company in the next few hours. Strictly amateur hour, but he’s a big SOB, so turn off Adult Swim and look alive.”
“Okay,” Schwartzchild said, “good start. Now tell us about the pirate pistol.”
Mendoza provided a quick recap of our adventures at Cumonow’s. He finished it off with a flourish by tossing the bullet-baggies on the table. I added one of the black powder bags—a nice bit of stage business that you wouldn’t have gotten from, say, a securities lawyer. Schwartzchild looked a bit befuddled. He was too polite to say, “So what?” but his expression unmistakably conveyed that message. Port, the crime maven with most of her career on the government side, came to the rescue.
“Ballistics tests tie a bullet to a particular gun by matching up marks that the gun made on the bullet when it was fired. The rifling inside the barrel accounts for most of those marks. A flintlock doesn’t have rifling. If you fire a bullet from a modern pistol, then retrieve the slug and fire it again from a smooth-bore flintlock, a ballistics test will probably tie the bullet to the contemporary weapon.”
“So the FBI test on Learned’s forty-five doesn’t necessarily prove that it fired the bullet that killed Tom Bradshaw,” Schwartzchild said.
“Right. And Ms. Jakubek’s conjecture that Learned could have hidden the actual murder weapon at the Bradshaw home isn’t completely implausible.”
Gee, thanks.
Mendoza, Schwartzchild, and Port then began discussing whether we should go to the cops with this theory, or sit tight and hope for the best, or something in between. I tried to pay attention. I really did. But I had trouble focusing. Agincourt Security isn’t mall cops with unloaded guns on their hips just for show. Agincourt is serious security for clients with serious money, most of whom have “Inc.” in their names. Its operatives are all ex-military or ex-cop. They beat up Blackwater guys on the playground. The guns they carry have real bullets in them. Their job is not to observe and report. And if I was right, Paul was headed right for them.
Without staring, I glanced across the table now and then at Ariane. She sat there, poised but wound pretty tight from the looks of her thin lips and occasionally clenched jaw. Three months ago, I might have been asking myself, Could she really have killed Tom Bradshaw? Really have stalked him to the museum with a cold-blooded plan worked out ahead of time, blown him away with her lover’s gun, and then put the gun back in Learned’s attaché case, knowing that that might get him convicted of a capital offense?
Today, I’d dismiss such childish doubts out of hand. You bet she could.
“Okay,” I remember Port saying at this point, “is there any place in the house where Learned could have hidden some kind of a smooth-bore pistol, where he could be reasonably sure you wouldn’t find it?”
“I don’t think so.” Ariane’s voice was calm and sure. “It’s a big house, but it doesn’t really have a lot of nooks and crannies. Tom had a pistol home this fall that he was working on for some exhibition, and the thing just stood out like a sore thumb. The case was too big and awkward to fit in his desk drawer, and he had to clear practically half a drawer in his filing c
abinet just to lock the thing away when he wasn’t working on it.”
“How long ago was that?” Port asked this very casually, as if the answer were a trivial concern but she wanted to make sure her notes were complete.
“Mid-November is the last time I remember seeing it.”
“Did Learned know it was there?”
“He could have,” Ariane said. “It’s the kind of thing Tom would have shown him if he got a chance.”
“Learned did know,” Caitlin said. “He commented to me about it once. I said something about how anything used for violence must be ugly, and he told me to ask Dad to show me that pistol. He called it ‘breathtaking.’”
If you were watching carefully and knew what to look for, you could have spotted a flicker of alarm on Port’s poker face as she framed her next question.
“Where is that pistol now?”
“I don’t know,” Ariane said. “I thought Tom returned it to the museum.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s right,” Caitlin said. “He made some joke about having to borrow one of my tennis bags because he didn’t have a briefcase big enough to hold the case, and he didn’t want to walk from the parking lot with something under his arm that looked valuable.”
“As soon as you get home,” Port said then, very evenly, “perhaps you could check the file cabinet and everything in the study, for that matter, and make sure it isn’t there.”
Ariane sketched a brief nod.
“So,” Mendoza said, “we send the bullets to Forensic-Tests-R-Us or someone so that they can do a workup on them, right?”
“I think so, yes.” Port gave a deferential glance to Schwartzchild in case he wanted to countermand her directive, but he didn’t.
Ariane and Caitlin looked like they couldn’t understand why this was obvious, but I did. If the bullets were stashed in a lab somewhere, they wouldn’t turn up if the cops dropped by Mendoza’s office with a search warrant.
“For the moment, at least,” Schwartzchild said then, “I take it our options are all on hold until we get the results of those tests.”
“Amen,” Mendoza said.
We all stood up, almost simultaneously. A quick round of goodbyes and the meeting was officially adjourned.
As I whipped through the handshakes I whispered to Mendoza that I’d meet him in the lobby in a few minutes. Then I retreated to the ladies’ room and had Paul speed-dialed before I got the stall door closed.
“Hello?”
“Paul, this is Cindy. I really hope you get this message before you reach your destination. Listen—”
“Cindy? This is Paul. I answered. You aren’t talking to voice mail.”
“What? Oh.” I ran my right hand through my hair, feeling like an airhead. “Sorry. I guess I’m just on automatic pilot.”
“So. What’s so urgent?” His voice had an oddly calm, I-know-something-you-don’t-know quality to it that I couldn’t remember hearing before. I halfway wondered if he was baked.
“I only have a minute, so I’ll keep it simple. There are people with guns at the Bradshaw home. They know you’re coming. Don’t go there.”
“Anything else?”
I took a deep breath. Lying through my teeth on a voice mail an hour ago was one thing, but I was about to ratchet things up a notch.
“How soon can I see you?”
“It depends. What are you doing tonight?”
So he was in Pittsburgh. Or pretty damn close to it.
“Tonight is wide open—if you promise me you won’t go near Plantation Bradshaw. Because if you do go near it you won’t be seeing anyone tonight except people with handcuffs—and I don’t mean bondage mistresses.”
“Cynthia, I solemnly swear to you that I will not come within a zip code of the Bradshaw place—wherever that may be. Where would you like to meet?”
Good question. One of the student dives near Duquesne? No. We’d stand out like a couple of narcs at a rave. I settled on The Bigger Jigger, near Mendoza’s office. If anyone from his shop noticed us they’d know enough to keep their distance. I gave him the name and address, and started to provide him with directions.
“No sweat, I have a GPS. Eight o’clock?”
“Can’t we make it six? How far away are you?”
“Not sure I can make it by six. Let’s say eight, to be safe.”
“You win.” I sighed. “Remember your promise.”
“I’ll tattoo my promise on my right arm so that I can never forget it. Later…”
There was something really off about his half of our conversation. No intensity, no fervent passion, but instead this vague, well-meaning condescension, like a chess grandmaster who keeps asking you if you’re sure you want to make that move. He smoked pot occasionally—he’d sometimes chided me for never indulging—but Paul on pot didn’t sound like this. When he was high he came across as spacey and a little dizzy, not detached and two-moves-ahead-of-you.
My gut was churning with mixed feelings when I rejoined Mendoza in the Fletcher & Peck lobby. Because the love wasn’t totally dead yet? No. As far as erotic love went, the cat was in the bag and the bag was in the river. But I didn’t hate him anymore, either. I figured he was being used by Learned, and that if he didn’t drop out of the game he’d probably end up dead or in prison. I didn’t want that to happen.
Or maybe I thought that I could use him. Manipulate him into spilling enough about Learned to get that silky, sophisticated bastard behind bars where he couldn’t threaten my client’s mother—and therefore my client. Learned’s sending Paul on a mission like this was a desperation play. I have a litigator’s soul. I’m a predator. I smelled blood in the water, and I wanted to be in on the kill.
As Mendoza and I made our way back to the office, he started saying something about finding two or three private forensic labs and getting quotes from them. Nodding, I quickly looked both ways to make sure we wouldn’t get creamed crossing Smallman Street. I saw a Prius painted British racing green. Before the car disappeared around a corner a block away, I knew where I was next going to see Paul—and it wasn’t at any saloon.
Chapter Forty-four
They say it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. I knew I’d never get permission, so I decided to keep Mendoza in the dark and hope for forgiveness.
It took me about forty-five minutes to dig up three quotes for private lab ballistics tests and get them to Mendoza. He said that he’d take it from there, which was fine with me.
“I did finally reach Paul, by the way,” I said then. “I warned him off the Bradshaw place and he promised not to go near it. But he’s either in Pittsburgh or on his way.”
“And he’s still after ‘the real murder weapon,’ I suppose.” Mendoza frowned. “That’d be my guess. I talked him into meeting me at eight tonight. Not alone. In a public place. The Bigger Jigger.”
Mendoza grunted while he thought that over.
“Don’t like it but I don’t see any way around it. I’ll have Cesario on-site, though.”
He cupped his left hand around his chin and gave me his hard-as-nails look, daring me to challenge his decision. I answered that with an earnest, wide-eyed nod that has worked with every male I’ve ever known except Vince.
“Sure, if you think that’s best.”
“I think that’s best.”
“Okay. Great. Let me know if I can do anything else to help.”
I returned to my cubicle and found other work to do until about three thirty. Then, leaving my computer on as a hint that I expected to come back to the office, I slipped into my coat and made a discreet exit. The Pittsburgh Museum of American History was thirteen blocks away, which is a little far for a comfortable walk in January, but the nearest cabstand was three blocks in the other direction. I just shrugged and hoofed it. I wanted
to get there before four, and I made it with six minutes to spare.
I could have gone straight to the Museum Administration Office without paying admission, but I went ahead and laid out six bucks to get in anyway. You really had to want to get to the office to find the signs that directed you to it. I managed it. Eventually I stood in front of a desk occupied by a silver-haired, old-school secretary—the no-nonsense kind. No way anyone much below the mayor would have gotten past her—except that I knew a magic word.
“Excuse me. My name is Cindy Jakubek. I’m one of Caitlin Bradshaw’s lawyers, and I wonder if I could speak for about ten minutes with the chief curator.” The magic word in there was “Bradshaw.”
“About what would you like to see him?” She didn’t end her sentence with a preposition—like I said, old school.
“There’s something that Mr. Bradshaw had withdrawn from the collection before his death, and I just wanted to make sure that it has been returned.”
For just an instant I saw a Whoa! look on her face. Then she picked up her telephone receiver and dialed a three-digit extension without looking at the keypad.
Five minutes later I was one-on-one with an elderly gentleman in a navy blue, three-piece suit, white shirt, rep tie, and oxfords with the kind of gloss you only see on shoes that are shined every week. Just about my height, maybe a shade taller, he had little wisps of dove gray hair that fluttered like capricious confetti around the edges of pink and white blotted scalp. The secretary addressed him as “Dr. Wheatley,” and he instructed me to call him Colin—short “o.”
“Terrible, terrible thing about Tom.” He took my hand in a damp, sympathetic grip, as if I were the grieving widow. “How is Mrs. Bradshaw doing?”
“Fairly well, under the circumstances, but of course it was a blow.”
“I certainly hope they catch the cowardly murderer who killed Tom.”
“I think they’re making progress, but I’m afraid I can’t talk about the case in detail.”
But Remember Their Names Page 25
